There are few more beautiful feasts in the Church’s calendar than this, the day we celebrate our Guardian Angels. It is something we all learn about when we are young and then as we grow up we forget about them. The angels become a sort of background figure, nearly like an out of focus person in a photograph, there but not very clearly.

As we grow older and have children of our own we begin to appreciate the idea that God has given us each a special angel to look after us. The hymn which the Church uses for today’s Morning Prayer states the teaching beautifully:

There is something very touching in that phrase, the thought that our God would be so concerned with the details of our lives that he would care for us in every situation, even to the extent of having an angel specially assigned to us.

“But chiefly at its journey’s end, Tis yours the spirit to befriend, And whisper to the willing heart, Oh, Christian soul, in peace depart.”

Imagine, we have the guarantee that when we come to dying our Guardian Angel shall whisper in our ear that it is time to go and that God shall give us the race to have a calm, loving and peaceful death.

Thankfully God is merciful and does not hold back his grace of a peaceful death even from those who do not believe in him.